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Google's first-quarter earnings are out, and this time, it looks like the search giant more or less met expectations--beating forecasts on the bottom line with a 61% jump in profit from a year ago, while revenues came just under the wire.

Non-GAAP earnings per share came in at $10.08, noticeably above analysts' expectations of $9.65 a share. Net revenue after payments to traffic partners was $8.14 billion, just a hair under forecasts of $8.15 billion.

Given that costs per click, whose decline in the fourth quarter led to profits falling below forecasts, fell again, by 12%, Google apparently did what it promised--made it up on a greater volume of clicks, up 39% from a year ago.

Google also announced a two-for-one stock split and dividend, but not a cash dividend, rather a new class of non-voting stock. In a letter from the founders, CEO Larry Page and Sergey Brin explained what they have in mind, which is essentially to preserve their voting control.

The report is being closely watched by investors, who have a lot of questions they would like to see answered in the wake of a surprising fourth-quarter earnings miss in January. Chief among them is why average prices per click on Google search ads fell, and what impact that will have on the company's business.

Unlike in the fourth quarter, investors seem copacetic following this report: After rising more than the overall market in trading Thursday, by 2.37% to $651.01, the shares are up about 1% in after-hours trading. Update: Later in the afternoon, shares were up only a fraction.

Advertising types also saw little to worry about. "The business continues to be really strong--for marketers too," says Bryan Wiener, CEO of the digital agency 360i. In particular, he says, Google has led the charge into mobile ads, where it's even more dominant than on the desktop, and in real-time ad bidding, where it has stolen the lead from Yahoo's Right Media.

Here are the highlights of the earnings call, and there's a link to it here. On the call are Page, CFO Patrick Pichette, and Chief Business Officer (sales chief) Nikesh Arora.

First up is Page. He talks about how Google is shooting for simplicity across its products, from Android to Google Play.

Google+ is truly at the heart of our efforts to create a simpler experience, he says. One part is the social spine, to create a single Google, not a bunch of products. The other part is the social destination. We see impressive engagement and fast growth here. (No new stats provided, however.)

Page addresses the issue of how Google is providing metrics on Google+. But he doesn't provide new ones.

Chrome has over 200 million users. Display ads have now passed $5 billion. (A big number if it's comparable to the previous $2.5 billion mentioned. Update: Actually, Google has previously trotted out that number, so nothing new there. But still significant.)